Berlinale Captures Growth, Innovations on Non-U.S. Series Drama Scene

Bleecker Street has acquired U.S. rights to Maria Schrader’s I’m Your Man after the film picked up a Silver Bear for Maren Eggert’s lead performance at the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorAltered Innocence has picked up U.S. rights to Kateryna Gornostai’s debut feature film “Stop-Zemlia,” which just had its world premiere in the Generation 14plus section of the Berlin Film Festival.The film follows Masha, her two best friends, and the rest of their class through parties, field trips and romance in their last year of high school.

Ted K, the true crime drama that premiered at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, has been snapped up for North American distribution by Neon’s boutique label Super Ltd.

Petite Maman, Céline Sciamma's follow-up to her 2019 international breakthrough Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a more intimate affair. The acclaimed French filmmaker has switched the erotic charge and sexual politics of her 18th century period drama for a more personal story of love and loss in a tale of an eight-year-old girl trying to connect with her mother.

Laetitia Eido, the French actress known to fans of Netflix's Israeli drama Fauda as Dr. Shirin El Abed, has signed on to co-star in Nhiem, a new high-end television series set during the Vietnam War from New Zealand director Roger Donaldson (The World's Fastest Indian) and German production group Carte Blanche International.

Guy Lodge Film CriticNow in its 35th year, the Teddy Awards are among the Berlinale’s most affectionately regarded institutions.

Amazon Prime Video has swooped on the critically acclaimed Chilean LGBTQ+ drama My Tender Matador for Latin America. The film —which first bowed in the Venice Days sidebar of the 2020 Venice Film Festival —won the audience award in the Open Horizons section of the 2020 Thessaloniki Film Festival.

Naman Ramachandran The Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear for best film has been won by “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” (Babardeală cu bucluc sau porno balamuc), directed by Radu Jude and produced by Ada Solomon.The international jury, made up of former Golden Bear winners, includes Mohammad Rasoulof from Iran, Nadav Lapid from Israel, Adina Pintilie from Romania, Ildikó Enyedi from Hungary, Gianfranco Rosi from Italy and Jasmila Žbanić from Jasmila Zbanic from Bosnia and Herzegovina.More to

Ed Meza @edmezavarPalestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir’s Gaza-set drama “The Oblivion Theory” has won the top prize at the Berlinale Co-Production Market.Presented by Paris-based Incognito Films and Berlin’s One Two Films, the film is based on José Eduardo Agualusa’s novel “A General Theory of Oblivion,” although the book’s story has been moved from Angola to Palestine during the First Intifada, the sustained protests by Palestinians against Israel occupation that lasted from 1987 to 1993.The

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterNeon has acquired North American rights to Céline Sciamma’s latest feature, “Petite Maman,” following its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.The sale reunites Sciamma with Neon, the New York-based independent studio that released her acclaimed drama “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.”Written and directed by Sciamma, “Petite Maman” follows 8-year-old Nelly, who loses her beloved grandmother and goes to help her parents clean out her mother’s childhood home.

There is an unavoidable distance in life between ourselves and those who came before. Parents, grandparents; no matter how open and honest they are with their children or younger relatives, there is a sense that their pasts remain partial enigmas.

The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain first premiered at the Austin Film Festival in October 2019; a year and a half later, it is heading to Berlin's European Film Market carrying the weight of 2020's racial reckoning. The 80-minute indie, written and directed by David Mindell, follows the final moments of Chamberlain's life.

U.K.-based sales outfit Alief has racked up a series of international territory deals for Isaac, a romantic drama from directors Ángeles Hernández and David Matamoros, about two childhood friends who reconnect as adults. Hernández and Matamoros were both producers on Netflix's Spanish-language horror hit The Platform.

Emiliano Granada One thing’s clear from the 2021 Berlin Film Festival’s get-go:  Its Berlinale Series strand grows stronger every year, and features for the first time two Latin America series which underscore the creative excitement of the limited miniseries format.“The Last Days Of Gilda,” Gustavo Pizzi and star Karine Teles’ adaptation of the same-titled stage play by Rodrigo de Roure is in its style, a playful portrayal of a woman trapped in a political and social tsunami now storming

Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired North American rights to WWII drama Into the Darkness, from veteran Danish filmmaker Anders Refn and depicting the disintegration of a family unit amid Denmark's slow side into fascism under the shadow of the Third Reich.

EXCLUSIVE: New York-based distributor FilmRise has struck a deal with sales firm WaZabi Films for U.S. rights to TIFF 2020 and Berlin 2021 drama Beans.

Naman Ramachandran Cold War spy drama “Baloton Brigade” has been selected to pitch at Series Mania in Lille as part of the Berlinale-Series Mania Project Exchange.Under the terms of the partnership, now in its seventh year, one project pitched at Series Mania at Lille is invited to pitch again at the ongoing Berlin Series Market’s Co-Pro Series (March 1-5). In return, Series Mania invites a Berlinale project to pitch in Lille as part of the Series Mania Forum (Aug.

Ed Meza @edmezavarBerlin has been wrought a shadow of its former bustling self by the ongoing pandemic, and while locals can still be seen on the streets, its once thriving nightlife, packed restaurants, crowded bars and 24-hour dance parties seem like a distant memory.The Berlinale was one of the few major industry events that managed to take place last year before the COVID-19 crisis hit Europe in March. This year, it has followed other major A-list festivals online.

Jay Weissberg Though little known in the English-speaking world, Erich Kästner’s slim novel originally translated in 1932 as “Fabian. The Story of a Moralist” is a brilliantly astute rendering of life in Weimar Berlin, straightforward and yet surreal, witty and perverse.

Naman Ramachandran Director Christian Schwochow and writer Thomas Wendrich’s “Je Suis Karl,” due to premiere at the Berlin Film Festival’s Berlinale Special strand in June, is a chillingly timely film.On Aug. 29, 2020, dozens of assailants from the far right attacked the Reichstag building, the home of German parliament in Berlin, the burning of which in 1933 heralded the rise of Hitler’s Nazi rule.